Nora Brown Design

More Google search options

There’s a lot more to Google than simple keyword searching. My last post was on the “link:” operator, but there are lots of other useful options. Google has put together a handy cheatsheet for search. And for a nicely formatted collection, visit Explore Google Search. Here are some highlights:

Phrase and word modifiers

OR

Example: “France OR Italy”. Returns: pages with either word. A search on just “France Italy” will return results with both words.

“” [quotes]

Example: “To be or not to be”. Returns: pages that contain exactly that phrase

- [minus sign]

Example: “happy -ecstatic”. Returns: pages without the “subtracted’ word.

+ [plus sign]

Example: “+dog”. Returns: pages with the exact word, not plurals or other verb tenses.

Other stuff

site:

Example: “happy site:www.microsoft.com”. Returns: pages from only the listed site. This one really comes in handy when a site’s own search tool is poor.

define:

Example: “define:chemistry”. Returns: the definition of the word.

time

Example: “time London”. Returns: the time in the searched location. Very handy—you never have to remember the time difference or deal with daylight savings, etc.